JENNI MURRAY: Why Blake Lively’s new film It Ends With US betrays real victims of domestic violence

I went to the cinema on Sunday night to see a film that I found very important. The film is called It Ends With Us and is based on a novel of the same name by Colleen Hoover.

The novel was inspired by the author’s experiences of witnessing her father’s violence and her mother’s suffering. It was well reviewed, sold millions of copies and was seen as a story that would raise awareness about domestic violence.

I thought it would be helpful if there was a film that would be watched by women and perhaps men too, that would explain how common this kind of abuse is in the home and that would show rather than tell the damage it does.

I’m afraid I was bitterly disappointed.

Blake Lively plays the beautiful, smiling Lily Bloom who has arrived in Boston to set up a flower shop. We soon learn at her father’s funeral that her mother suffered at the hands of his violence. Lily can’t bring herself to deliver a eulogy. Shortly after the funeral, she meets the charming, handsome brain surgeon, Ryle Kincaid, and falls madly in love.

Glossy romance fills most of the film with hints that he once shoved her in the face and pushed her down the stairs – both by accident. It’s only when he tries to rape her, knocking her unconscious, after discovering she’s been seeing an old lover, that he starts to fit the abuser mold.

She discovers she is pregnant. He is there for the birth of their daughter and then calmly walks away when she tells him she wants a divorce.

The film does not portray domestic violence as it really is. It is true that abusers are often handsome, wealthy, and charming, and that such violence can occur in even the most orderly and affluent homes, but the idea that such a man would accept rejection without complaint is ridiculous. We know that it is often at this point that violence escalates, and women who are brave enough to try to escape often die. The words “It Ends with Us” spoken to a baby girl are, unfortunately, fiction.

Until the late 80s and early 90s I knew nothing about domestic abuse, since then it has become perhaps the most important subject we have covered on Woman’s Hour.

I had heard of Erin Pizzey, who founded a charity called Refuge in 1971, providing safe haven for women and children in Chiswick, West London, but left the charity in the 1980s and now campaigns for men’s rights.

In 1989 I learned how the legal system in this country had different rules for how violent men and women were treated. Sara Thornton had been repeatedly beaten by her husband, had sought help from the police, but no one came.

She stabbed and killed him, was convicted of murder and given a life sentence. The judge said she could have just ‘walked outside or gone upstairs’.

Shortly after Thornton lost her appeal, Joseph McGrail murdered his common-law wife while she was drunk by repeatedly kicking her in the stomach. He was given a two-year suspended sentence for manslaughter and walked free. The judge expressed “every sympathy” for him and added: “This lady would have tried the patience of a saint.” I and many other women were outraged by this discrepancy in treatment.

The justice reform campaign Justice for Women was founded in 1990 and I became a strong supporter of its work.

It has taken over 30 years for campaigns by lawyers, some MPs and journalists like myself to take the problem seriously. Laws have changed, judges have been trained and Refuge and Women’s Aid have done their best to help women find safe places for themselves and their children. And it has taken until now for the police to really accept that a phone call from a terrified woman is not ‘just a domestic one’.

Last month, the National Police Chiefs’ Council revealed that an estimated two million women are victims of male violence every year, calling it an epidemic so serious it amounts to a “national emergency”. Louisa Rolfe, the national lead for domestic abuse and assistant commissioner at the Metropolitan Police, said the true figure was likely to be four million, as many offences go unreported.

Now, however, there is a chance that violence against women and girls will be taken seriously enough to be high on the political agenda.

The prime minister is said to be haunted by the story of Jane Clough, a 26-year-old nurse who was stabbed 71 times by her ex-partner in 2010. He had been charged with rape and was released on bail. Starmer befriended Jane’s parents when he was Director of Public Prosecutions and the issue of violence against women and girls is now a priority for him.

Police are to be tasked with monitoring the country’s 1,000 most dangerous abusers. Emergency services responding to 999 calls are to be assigned a domestic abuse advisor. A ‘mission board’ is to be set up to halve violence against women and girls within ten years.

Jess Phillips leads the council as the first ever Minister for Protection and Violence Against Women and Girls. Starmer could not have made a better appointment. I know her well and I cannot recall ever meeting a more determined and direct politician. She worked for a long time at Women’s Aid before entering parliament.

She is committed to this: for nine years now, on International Women’s Day, she has read out a list in parliament of all the women who have been murdered in the past year.

I have confidence in both Phillips and Starmer on this. I invited Starmer on Woman’s Hour to talk about violence against women. He cares. But he needs to make sure that the police take it seriously and that there are no more Wayne Couzens in the force.

As prisoners are released early to make room, there should be no rapists or stalkers among them and the courts should be open to deal with these cases in a timely manner. Too many rape victims and battered women give up because it takes too long to get to court. Plenty to do Jess and Keir. Just keep going.

At least Brad tried with Shiloh

Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt has officially dropped her father Brad Pitt’s name and has become Shiloh Nouvel Jolie. It seems she’s preferring to keep her mother’s name.

Brad set up a skate park at his house for Shiloh, and an art studio to reflect their shared interest in art. It seems none of this has brought them closer together.

No reason was given for the name dropping, but Pitt and Jolie’s divorce, which began in 2016 and remains pending due to ongoing custody and financial issues, may not have helped matters.

Motorists are not ATMs

I recently got two tickets, both times for driving on streets that I used to drive on a lot, but which are now one-way and have no proper traffic signs.

I am afraid to drive around my hometown. Every now and then I notice that my speed has gone from 20 mph to 22. A few of my friends are about to take a speeding course – they have been caught doing 24 mph. It is terrible that cash-strapped municipalities seem to be using drivers as ATMs.

• Well done BBC for insisting that there be no protest flags at the recent Last Night of the Proms. It is a proudly British event and I was never happier than when I managed to get two tickets for my parents’ 60th wedding anniversary. It is my dad’s favourite night of the year and he was delighted to enter the Royal Albert Hall with his little union flag.

• People used to laugh at my Delia version of shepherd’s pie or Victoria sponge. ‘Can’t you even boil an egg?’ they’d say. Delia is a self-proclaimed culinary equivalent of a Volvo, but her basic dishes are reliable and delicious.

No break? I won’t show up!

My nights out, not as often as they used to be, are to the theatre. I dress up. I order a drink before the interval. So what is this new fashion for plays to go on without an interval? It is becoming more and more common and not always for a short play. The theatres are going bankrupt without the profit from drinks and ice cream and sometimes the plays go on for so long!

I’m not going to see David Tennant’s Macbeth at the Harold Pinter Theatre, for nearly two hours. No interval and no chance to slip away if I get bored.